Ask HN: Why is it becoming more common to end declarations with question marks?

2 points by aliqot ↗ HN

4 comments

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Curiously, I’ve observed a frequent occurrence of question marks at the end if the sentence begins with “why”.
Then that wouldn't be a declaration, that would be an interrogative sentence.
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Idk? joke aside, I think it's a way to sound less bossy or imposing or something like that on text communications? (see, I did it again, maybe?)

I know I use it in slack as a way to invite comments on a message, sort of like saying, "hey, this is my opinion because of this reasons, but I want to leave this conversation thread open to hear back from you)

Probably different people do it for a bunch of different reasons, but with all the voice inflection data lost in Slack, what else can you do?